How you can say the gameplay isn't the same? The mission structure is the same. The items are the same. Orbs perform the same purpose. And combat is largely the same except for having different weapons and a few slightly different controls. So what about the gameplay is different/worse?

The combat itself is very different from what I can tell. Outside of the fact they destroyed the iconic protagonist of the series the combat is not the same at all.

Not saying this game is bad, but certainly it isn't much like previous DMC games.

DMC1-4 had a sort of combat that no other third person beat-em-ups had. DMC: Devil May Cry itself doesn't have the same essence.

Haven't gotten too deep into PC game yet, it's typically not my genre and the old style games never appealed to me, but so far this is very nice. Great graphics, responsiveness, even though it's a button masher you can enjoy the visuals, and the production value is typical Ninja Theory top notch. If you didn't like the old style games, it just wasn't your thing, I would definitely give this a try. I had 0 interest before and this is quite nice.